At 2:38 pm on November 5, 2013 a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C25 will lift off from Sriharikota spaceport with the aim of reaching the red planet Mars. If the mission is successful then the PSLV-C25 will travel for almost 300 days, cover 680 million kilometres and reach Mars on September 24, 2014.
The mission will catapult the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) into a select list of countries to have sent a mission to Mars successfully. ISRO would be the fourth space agency in the world to have sent a mission to Mars. European Space Agency (ESA) of European consortium, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the US and Roscosmos of Russia are the only three agencies which have so far sent their missions to the red planet. Only 21 of the total of 51 missions sent to Mars by various countries have been successful.